Autumn
by Ivory Novelist
Summary: Oneshot. Todd reflects. Please RR.


A/N: This is a one-shot DPS fic. If you like this, check out my other DPS WIP "Maps".  
  
Please R/R!  
  
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Autumn  
  
Have you ever stopped to look at the way the leaves fall away in autumn? Did it ever occur to you, as they floated to the fading grass like patches of an old painting, that they were dying? Have you ever watched some one live in those leaves, laughing as they rained from another tree, and realize how beautiful it was? Have you ever wondered how one moment can make you forget about the pain? Have you ever marveled how one smile can mask a broken spirit, marred with bleeding color? Have you ever known peace, forgetting what was because of what is? Have you ever lived? Have you ever loved living?   
  
Todd Andersen leaned against the doorpost with his hands buried in his coat pockets. His shoulder pressed into the wood, and he realized in his subconscious that his posture was too much like Charlie's. His pants swayed in the wind, matching his hair. The painted black door remained flung open, its every plank standing out somehow. The gray stones that formed three steps beyond Todd's feet reminded him of pavement under bicycle tires. The poet was caught in a painting with a nostalgic atmosphere.  
  
The day was crisp, with pale clouds blanketing the sky. Everything glowed with autumn, like embers dying in the ashes. The wind was familiar, different now than in any other season. He felt poetic in the doorway, watching the scene that resonated the essence of a living painting. The veil of silence kept reality's sounds at bay for a while. He could not hear the wind or the birds hidden away. He could not hear the echoing laughter or his own dissipating breath. The moment he lived in seemed surreal – surreal in the same way the past year had been. He felt as if he were in a dream, as if he was asleep and dreaming of pretty things that were somehow tainted to make it more believable. Motion was slow, and he noticed everything. The leaves were like a quiet snow, and the light had lost itself in the color. He wondered if he would ever wake up, wondered if he wanted to. He didn't think so.  
  
They were like children again. Youth radiated from each face, shining through the translucent leaves. The wind tousled their hair with fingers that were not unlike their own. It flew gently through the paint, the essence of things. He felt as if he were outside of his own body somehow, standing in the doorway and yet also walking among them. He could have smiled, but he didn't want to feel the same pleasant mist yet. He felt as if he owed the art exclusive felicity for a while. Even as the golden atmosphere filled his soul, with the smell of crimson apples and oranges pierced with cloves, he remembered in his skin what it was like to be touched. He, who had once been a stranger to love, could see the memories of hands running over his starved body, of fingers in his hair, digging into his shoulders. He returned to those moments as he watched them in the leaves. He remembered candles and cinnamon falling like snow. It all seemed like years ago, like looking back on a life already done. Time did not exist in moments like this – not in paintings.  
  
He watched Neil Perry laugh with sparkling eyes, sparkling like cider in a crystal glass. He noticed the way his cheeks were rosy, rosy like the nights spent by a quiet fire reading poetry, like the every moment he blushed when they told him they loved him. He watched the way the leaves drifted down above him like reflective music, felt a twinge when he noticed the red leaf in his hair. He wondered how someone like Neil could have been broken once and how he could have survived. He had not forgotten what darkness lay in the past. He could not forget what it felt like to almost lose him. He remembered his own hands running over the gray sweater that now clung to leaves and Neil's body. He remembered the empty mattress against the right wall of his old room, how bleak it was when he was alone in the window, when it was never his place. He watched slow memories of racing up the winding stairs, throwing the door open, silent laughter in the painted room upstairs, with white pillows like clouds in the air. He wondered how he could have lived from one room to the next, how he could have found it in himself to fill the house with color and light, how he could have been blessed with love to live with him.  
  
Todd watched Knox and Charlie laugh in the colors. It wasn't like Neil's laughter. Neil's laughter always rang out among them all, resonating through the house, in the faded walls. It was the laughter of someone who was alive, someone who would live forever. In his memory, it was the powdered sugar smudging their faces and the melted chocolate on Neil's face that Charlie swiped off, making the actor smile. It was the night sky on every clear evening, when Todd would lie in bed beside his window. It was the veil of immortal memory like waves down the staircase, through the corridors, floating through the doorways into the rooms. Whether it was the house he lived in or the house of his soul, he did not know. Probably both.  
  
Meeks was most likely up in his room, reading with his desk lamp on. Pitts was probably with him. Todd wondered if they saw what was outside the window, below on the ground. He wondered if they were watching too, admiring the beauty of life in the same way. Probably not, he concluded. Finally, he let himself smile. He smiled with all the beautiful scenes in his thoughts, all the candles of memory burning in his soul. The flames flickered and glowed – much like Neil's smile, he thought. He watched the wax melt and drip down the candle sides, and he smiled because it was beautiful. He ran through the abode of his soul, past the candles, through the color, with the music. He felt his heart rise within him, breath-taking realization tingling his fingertips. Simplicity was beautiful. Life was a painting. Everyday was amazing. He lived in the house of his soul, and it was the house he stood in.  
  
He smiled as he thought of Charlie filling the house with the sounds of his saxophone, whether it was nonsense or music. He smiled as he thought of Knox standing outside by his car, confessing his love to Chris with his lips. He thought of writing poetry late at night, reading in the quiet of his room, chasing and fleeing, cooking and eating, drinking red wine and lying in the grass, trying to see paintings in the clouds. He thought of hands rubbing his shoulders, fingers tousling his hair, arms wrapped around him. He thought of the way it was always warm and lovely. He smiled and thought of Neil whispering to him at night, when they were enveloped in Todd's bed covers, of whatever it was that brought him joy, with passion and bliss in his voice. He thought of the photographs and how he could look at them for all the years yet to come in life and know the smiles were real.  
  
Todd Andersen leaned in the doorway, the wind brushing against him. He watched the dying leaves fall from their branches, in all the glory of autumn. His hands were buried in his coat pockets, and silence hovered. When he felt something rub up against him, he looked down to see the ginger cat wrapped around his leg. It stared up at him with yellow eyes, as if asking him what he was watching. He smiled down at it, before looking back to the painting.  
  
Have you ever stopped to look at the way the leaves fall away in autumn? Did it ever occur to you, as they floated to the fading grass like patches of an old painting, that they were dying? Have you ever watched some one live in those leaves, laughing as they rained from another tree, and realize how beautiful it was? Have you ever wondered how one moment can make you forget about the pain? Have you ever marveled how one smile can mask a broken spirit, marred with bleeding color? Have you ever known peace, forgetting what was because of what is? Have you ever lived? Have you ever loved living?   
  
For all the pain he had once been forced to endure, he found it no longer mattered. Somehow, the wounds of his misery had vanished. Somehow, he was happy again. Somehow, he had been brought to life. Somehow, he loved breathing, and he loved waking up alive. Somehow, after all the misery, he was free. 


End file.
